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One of the things that annoy me about you is that you immediately assume "people on the left" don't care about something just because they haven't heard about it or they aren't protesting in the streets about it.

Do you think people on the right care about Ethiopia? The president of our country is having a twitter meltdown today because a report is set to be released that may show him to be a criminal and you're criticizing the left for not having their undivided attention on a country half the world away?

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One of the things that annoy me about you is that you immediately assume "people on the left" don't care about something just because they haven't heard about it or they aren't protesting in the streets about it.

Do you think people on the right care about Ethiopia? The president of our country is having a twitter meltdown today because a report is set to be released that may show him to be a criminal and you're criticizing the left for not having their undivided attention on a country half the world away?

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One of the things that annoy me about you is that you immediately assume "people on the left" don't care about something just because they haven't heard about it or they aren't protesting in the streets about it.

Do you think people on the right care about Ethiopia? The president of our country is having a twitter meltdown today because a report is set to be released that may show him to be a criminal and you're criticizing the left for not having their undivided attention on a country half the world away?

Says the guy who glibly thinks "people on the right" don't care about foreign countries unless oil is present. Also who makes it a point if people don't elucidate their thoughts about say Todd Atkins, Christine O'Donnell, or President Trump before daring to opine about someone left of center.

Some of them do sure. The President of our country is a jackass yet still more likable according to polling than the lady the Democrats backed to run against him. The left don't need to have their undivided attention on Ethiopia. However according to you it doesn't seem they can do more than one thing at a time. That is like some Republican shill saying why are you asking them to think about Climate Change when they are busy focused on the trade deficit with China.

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In August, Jawar returned to Ethiopia as a hero. He had last been there in 2008. The government of new reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, an Oromo from the ruling coalition, dropped all terrorism charges against him, and Jawar transformed from an outside agitator, an activist, to a political figure with huge influence over the new government.

Thousands of people lined the streets, celebrating his return. But across the country, perhaps emboldened by their unlikely victory, young Oromos clashed violently with members of other ethnic groups, and the violence displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

On Twitter and in newspapers, critics wondered if the ethnically driven politics that helped push political change had become toxic — threatening to rip the country apart along ethnic lines.

Jawar brushes off those kinds of concerns, dismissing them as political barbs with no basis in reality.

"When you do things the way I do, you create a lot of losers," he says. "Of course you are going to have a lot of enemies."

On the day Jawar came to Shashamane, in August, thousands showed up to welcome someone they viewed as their philosophical inspiration. But at some point, the crowd fixated on one man — a non-Oromo whom they accused of carrying a bomb.

Kemal points at a lamppost in front of him: That's where the crowd hung the man by his feet and beat him to death. No bomb was ever found.

"We were not the ones who hung him," Kemal says, blaming another group for trying to spark a new conflict between young Oromos and police.

Either way, as images of a mob of young men surrounding the man's limp body spread across Ethiopia, it sparked fears that the Oromos' uprising had empowered violent ethnic nationalism.

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Parallels to Yugoslavia. Ethiopia has been united for a lot longer than 60 years, though.

The demands are interesting.

Their victory, they say, gives them a right to two other demands: that the capital should once again be administered by Oromia, and that the Oromo language should displace Amharic as the country's official language.

Reminded that those two demands could prove highly combustible, Kemal responds without hesitating: "They are not negotiable."

The federal language of Ethiopia is Amharic and has been since like the 12th century. It is also the first language of the Amhara (2nd most populous group in Ethiopia at 27%). Meanwhile Oromo language (Oromos make up 34.5% of the population) is a dialectic continuum and not all varieties are mutually intelligible. There are 3 to 4 versions existing in Ethiopia with another version in Kenya.

Then the demand to oversee the capital. Which I always treat as suspicious.